The Lantern Light
by The Sky Pirate Girl
Summary: Susan forgets. Peter forgives. Edmund remembers. She dreams, of a time when she was old enough to love the man she has loved thrice.


**The Lantern Light  
**

She still has the dreams. In her mind, she has never stopped aging.

He smiles down at her, pretty, little Lucy and doesn't know that she is twice his age.

"Edmund," she whispers, broken, wistful, tired, hopeful. "Edmund, do you remember?"

.

Susan forgets. Peter forgives. She dreams. Edmund remembers.

He remembers being old enough to rule a kingdom, to fight wars and make love. He remembers the way his body used to feel - tall and grown and he could command it in any way he wished.

.

Forest, trees, she slowly moves through, seeking for the lantern.

Caspian is someone she would have conquered, had she been her real age.

It wasn't fair. Why was Susan the older one?

.

_Her veins on fire, dances and laughter, men falling at her feet. Corin by her side, asking her to marry him. Laughing a yes through her tears, their beautiful wedding on the shore before Cair._

"Edmund," she says, hugging her pillow so tightly to herself. "Do you remember your nephew?"

He embraces her and kisses the top of her head. "Yes," he tells her soothingly. "I remember Tirian - he had his father's eyes and your smile."

"Do you think he became a good king?" she asks, crying through her smile. "Do you think he married a good woman when he grew up?"

"Yes," he promises.

"And his father?"

"Lucy..."

"Don't you think that Caspian looks so very much like him?"

.

She starts forgetting. Horrified that she'd forget like Susan, she starts writing everything down in a diary. She had been a traveler, an ambassador, a healer queen, a wife and a mother and a lover and a sinner. She had been old enough. She is still old enough to mourn her son and husband who have been lost to her for only a few years, but to this land they've aged and died like the autumn leaves before the oncoming winter.

.

And now, in front of this new king who is a traveler, an ambassador, a king-explorer, and had once loved her sister, she feel that she is too little, or that he is too blind.

"Caspian," she tells him one day. "You have to know, surely," and she looks him straight in the eyes, willing him to see what she sees each night in her dreams. "This is not my true face."

He averts his eyes from her, a quiet 'I know'.

"This is not my true age."

.

What does she expect him to do?

He sees her, smiles at her but she'd never understand his struggles. How could anyone see eyes so ancient and hard and smiling and think her a child?

In another life, he swears at the sea, he would love her. Again.

So when he hugs her goodbye with more warmth and a bit longer than necessary, he looks at Aslan and vows that he will love her, in another life.

.

There is a boy in the college near her school who looks like the man she had loved twice, but his eyes are darker and sadder. Her light draws her in to him.

His name is Dorian and he asks her out the first time he sees her.

She promises to herself, as she broads on the train, that this time she would not let anyone take him away.

.

Now she seems old enough but she has never felt more little.

"Edmund," she whispers as they watch through the balcony of the true Cair Paravel. "I haven't seen Corin here. "

"Neither have I," her brother tells her.

"Nor did I see Caspian."

Her brother takes her into his arms and kisses the top of her head.

"Your son is here, Lu."

She laughs. "For that, I'm glad."

.

And he really sinks to his lowest after she dies. Without her light he is lost, in this world of temptations and darkness.

He doesn't hope to meet her wherever she is.

.

How many lifetimes pass before she sees him again, she doesn't know. But her son has his eyes and the waiting is easier with him and her brothers and her friends by her side.

Time would not keep them separated forever, she knew, it would pass in a blur, as though she is dreaming.

.

When she sees him, finally, _finally_, she awakens to the most wonderful of realities.

Because he remembers and she forgives and all is well.

The true lantern in glowing like a little sun in the midst of the forest.


End file.
